Clashing Freedoms

ANOTHER controversy regarding exercise of education and religion has erupted in Southern Philippines, threatening the amity among Filipinos therein. Pilar College, a prestigious Catholic Christian educational institution in Zamboanga City, has imposed a policy that prohibits the wearing of hijab in the campus. This policy has offended Muslims who claimed that such is an outright form of discrimination against them.

In a news article entitled “In the Name of Religious Freedom” published in Manila Bulletin on August 23, 2012, Jhumura Napii-Estino, parent and alumna of Pilar College, explained that “… hijab symbolizes a Muslim woman’s faith, loyalty and submission to the will of Allah.”

In the same article, Warina Sushil A. Jukuy, coordinator of the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA)-WesMin Paralegal Workers, was quoted as saying “asking a Muslim student to take off her head veil is like stripping her of her undergarments.”

Jukuy added, “Such action is an encroachment upon her right to privacy. It is synonymous to stripping her nude or to physical transgression. When a pious Muslim compromises her faith just to pursue a career, it is seen as committing the crime of spiritual genocide….”

On the other hand, Sr. Maria Nina Balbas of the Religious of the Virgin Mary, the congregation that administers the school, explained that the said policy does not intend to curtail the religious freedom of their Muslim students.

During the first dialogue with the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos (NCMF), Balbas said, as reported in Manila Bulletin: “Such a policy does not intend to discriminate but rather to democratize or to equalize all students regardless of their religion.”

Claiming the school’s right to academic freedom, she added: “The way I look at it, it is even Pilar College now that is being discriminated because it is being mandated to conform to something that will suit the Muslim enrollees despite of the fact that the school has a Catholic identity….”